Some people actually pray to win a huge chunk of cash in the lottery, which is understandable when you consider how many common problems would be instantly solved by a sudden infusion of $400 million into your personal account.

But I question the tactic of using prayer to ask God to reward you with helpful, timely interventions. One look at a day’s worth of woe as it unfolds in the news is enough to convince a sober observer that God doesn’t feel a particular sense of urgency about rescuing good people from calamities.

Besides, if there was a divine desire to make you rich, would God need to use the Lottery to do it? I don’t think so – not as long as we have Las Vegas and Wall Street and You Tube.

And as we’ve discussed here before, there is ample evidence that winning a huge jackpot could easily turn out to be the worst thing that has ever happened to you.

We have explored before what sort of language one might use when beseeching the deity for decent numbers, but there is infinite variety possible within every simple form. So with all that in mind, I went ahead and bought my single ticket for Wednesday’s Powerball while muttering this quiet prayer.

Now I play the Powerball,
I pray my numbers come up, all.
And if I become rich today,
I pray I won’t throw it away.

By partying until the dawn.
By buying yachts for hangers-on.
By funding every worthless scheme
presented as a noble dream.

By hanging out in seedy bars.
By buying worthless classic cars.
By sending distant kin abroad.
Investing in a mammoth fraud.

By launching my own space balloon.
By subsidizing Trail Baboon.
By backing bets my buddies cast
On horses that will finish last.

I pray, in short, for money smarts,
to add to all my other arts.
The wisdom and the sense to see
I shouldn’t play the lottery.

How to squander a fortune? Let us count the ways.

An opinion piece in the New York Times suggests we are nearing a time when there will be precious few places in the world with enough snow to hold a Winter Olympics.

Things are changing that fast.

It is remarkable, especially during this unusually brisk and frosty winter, to think that piles and piles of snow could become an oddity reserved for only a few of the planet’s people.

I wish I could say I was doing something to stop this tragedy from unfolding, but my first response to just about any calamity is to write a parody of one of some great author’s work. Not a very effective strategy to stop climate change, but in my defense I can say that I was not driving a gas guzzling SUV all the while I struggled with the task of re-writing Robert Frost’s masterpiece.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
He does not come in winter, though;
The town folks easily get stuck
On nights with just a little snow.

My horse was once a pickup truck.
I had to sell it. Drat the luck.
There’s no more gasoline or oil.
Just horsey rumps and horsey muck.

The world is hot. The oceans boil.
The glaciers melt. Our treasures spoil
It’s something grand to watch the snow.
So strange to see it hide the soil.

That’s why I stopped here for the show
For generations long ago
And future ones who’ll never know
A time when woods could fill with snow.

What is the rarest wonder you’ve witnessed?

God bless Clement Clark Moore, who gave parodists a simple rhyme to corrupt each year at this time. I have made a life’s work out of repeatedly ruining “A Visit From St. Nicholas“, Moore’s 1823 verse credited with creating many of our popular notions of Santa Claus.

I do this because it’s easy, because I’ve been invited to a Solstice party where people are encouraged to bring seasonal poetry, and because “Twas the night before Christmas …” is so ingrained in our holiday tradition it cannot be damaged by any assault.

And it’s endlessly updatable:

‘Twas night of the solstice, a dark one throughout.
I was under surveillance – there wasn’t a doubt.

My cell phone activity had been compiled
and parsed and examined and noted and filed.

My Internet searches were hacked and collected.
My GPS data was tracked, as expected.

So as I settled down, warm and snug and alone
there was nothing about me that couldn’t be known.

When out on the lawn arose a great cry.
There were copters and fighter jets up in the sky.

The harsh glare of searchlights swept down through the trees.
The whole street was soon filled up with black SUVs.

There were Seals from the Navy attacking my door.
They were backed up by SWAT teams. I knew not what for.

So I did then what people do when they’re confused.
I turned on the TV and went straight for FOX News.

And there to my wondering eyes did appear,
Geraldo Rivera – bare-chested, sincere.

He had jumped out of bed and run straight to my place
Because word was the N.S.A. was on the case

of a fugitive miscreant – here at my home.
Who would be apprehended, just like Al Capone.

And I realized as I heard door jambs implodin’
They’d mixed me up once again with Edward Snowden!

Because stalking technology’s easily conned
When you buy the same stuff at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

So as laser sight pinpricks danced jigs on my chest
I said “there goes my dream of a long winter’s rest”.

While I waited for Seal Team Six, soon to arrive
For my interrogation, (that’s if I survive)

I considered the peace of the season we’re in.
How our Mother, the Earth, will reliably spin

and we’ll turn toward the light that will banish our fear
On the longest and darkest night of the whole year.

Have you ever suffered a case of mistaken identity?

When the significant date of an historic event arrives, all of our analog and digital media get together to transmit in a variety of ways what I’ve decided to call a Calendar Reactive Anniversary Pile On, or CRAPO.

That’s a bit coarse, I know. But like CRAPO is how I feel each time another somber reflection of past tragedy pops out of the entertainment/information gizmo I had turned to for a little weather or some sports scores.

So on a whim and to lighten the mood I commissioned Trail Baboon sing-song poet laureate Schuyler Tyler Wyler to write a ditty to relentless retrospectives.  Here’s his best effort:

This is The Day. Where Were You When?
Do you feel now like you did then?
On screens or paper, each device
demands you suffer through it twice.

Do you recall the words you said?
The thoughts you had? The things you read?
Devoted decades to delete it?
Write that down for me. I’ll tweet it!

Like planets orbiting a star
the worst news never goes too far.
It disappears a while and then
it comes around again, again.

I told STW he failed with this assignment because the mood is too heavy. He agreed and blamed it on this particular poetic form, which he said is too simplistic to have an official name. He’s decided to call it an Octosyllabic Triple Quadrain with a Hangnail for that one stubborn nine-syllable line in the second word clump. Not that it matters what we call it, but I heard once that dark things can feel less awful if we put a name on them.

Name something you’ve named.